#GeneralMotors

It was only a few short days ago we brought you news of Ford announcing it will be granting its EVs the capability of hoovering electricity from Tesla-branded charging stations. If that news gave you whiplash, last night’s announcement of a similar move from General Motors will surely put yer back out.

Take time away from your BBQ or the Indy 500 to check out a classic TTAC post.

Chevrolet has announced that the all-electric Silverado will boast a much-higher maximum range than anyone had anticipated. Rory Harvey, General Motors' incoming president for North America, has stated that the Silverado EV Work Truck (WT) will have an EPA-estimated 450 miles of range 450 miles on a full charge. That’s far better than what its rivals are currently offering and exceeds earlier assumptions made by those watching the industry.

Ford is scaling back in China. Yet, at the same time, General Motors' Buick brand survived the brand purges in 2008-2009 in part because of its success in China.

So, what is the best way for non-Chinese makes to succeed in that market?

Takata gets most of the negative attention when it comes to airbag recalls, but a Tennessee manufacturer is facing calls to pull back 67 million airbag inflators for risk of rupture and explosion. There have already been injuries related to the issue, and General Motors has agreed to its own recall to remedy the problem.

On Tuesday, General Motors confirmed Apple’s Mike Abbott as the executive vice president of its Software division — an important role considering that the automaker is betting large on shifting revenue toward connectivity. The company has been stressing the importance of integrated mobile services for years and recently announced it would be dumping Apple CarPlay so that drivers would be required to interface with its proprietary operating system.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are among the most asked-for tech features in new cars, but automakers can’t seem to come to terms with what that means for their own technology interfaces. Toyota was super slow to offer the tech, much to the irritation of buyers, and we recently learned that GM plans to phase the feature out in EVs going forward. The automaker’s cross-town rival, Ford, won’t be heading down the same path, as CEO Jim Farley said the battle has already been lost.

General Motors' self-driving arm, Cruise LLC is recalling 300 robo-taxis after one of its vehicles crashed into a San Francisco bus on March 23rd.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra met with Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, (D-WA) and fellow Democratic Commerce Committee member Gary Peters in Washington D.C. on Thursday to help lobby for favorable legislation pertaining to self-driving cars. Though it sounds like they were already on board with whatever GM wanted, as they’ve already started repeating familiar rhetoric designed to encourage legislators to tweak Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).

The meetings coincide with Barra's press events discussing how the automaker would like to implement artificial intelligence (including the infamous ChatGPT) into future products.

General Motors is planning to spend an estimated $1.5 billion to buy out a meaningful portion of its salaried workforce in the hopes that the decision will help save the company $2 billion over the next couple of years. While it seems like a very expensive way to save money, CEO Mary Barra clearly feels as though now is the time to strike.

With production pauses becoming commonplace during the pandemic, automakers realized they could effectively starve the market while demand reached dizzying highs that allowed the industry to trim overhead and forego factory incentives. Unfortunately, this also meant consumers were given less choice and often had to pay more – whether or not they found what they wanted on dealer lots.

Many automakers have stated that they won’t be going back to robust vehicle inventories and would instead continue attempting to run lean in order to maximize profitability. With exactly that in mind, General Motors has opted to suspend production at its Fort Wayne, Indiana truck assembly facility. The pause will last two weeks (impacting the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra) and help the company “maintain optimal inventory levels.”

With a headline like that, one might think today’s date was closer to 2003, not 2023. Nevertheless, it seems The General has decided to idle its Indiana truck plant for a couple of weeks this spring in order to “help the company maintain optimal inventory levels.”

What’s next? Zero percent financing and cash on the hood?

The eighth-generation Chevrolet Corvette remains hard to get almost three years after its introduction, and it appears hopeful buyers may have a little longer to wait for their new sports car. Automotive News reported that General Motors is pausing production at the Bowling Green, Kentucky facility that builds the Corvette due to a temporary parts shortage.

We posted earlier about the fact that many hourly employees at General Motors could enjoy five-figure bonuses this year, thanks in part to tweaks in the UAW agreement and a banner year for profits. Now, word has leaked about bonuses for the salaried. They may be down from last year – but many remain far higher than the ones paid to hourly employees. 

Flying in the face of empty dealership lots and a headache-inducing supply chain, General Motors reported this morning that the company recorded just under $10 billion in net income during the 2022 calendar year. This is good news for anyone wearing a GM hat, including hourly workers who will find enormous bonus checks in their mailboxes later this year.